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June Beekeeping Calendar

The Colony: Entering the Summer Transition

​​While May brought a massive population boom and high swarm energy, June completely shifts our focus. The intense Middle Georgia heat is settling into Hancock County, and our colonies face a major environmental transition. We are rapidly moving away from spring abundance and heading directly into the summer doldrums.

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Keep an eye out for a fascinating behavior on the front of your hives this month: washboarding. You may see lines of workers tightly grouped on the outside landing board or hive face, moving in a synchronized, rhythmic back-and-forth rocking motion while scraping the surface with their mandibles and front legs.

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What is Washboarding? While it looks like a coordinated dance troupe or line dancing, washboarding is a common, harmless behavioral phenomenon that peaks during summer dearths. Scientists still do not fully understand why bees do it. The leading textbook theories suggest it is an instinctual cleaning or polishing mechanism to clear the hive exterior, a method for texture conditioning, or a way to spread colony-specific pheromones when foragers have no field nectar to collect and are left with idle time inside the box.

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Weather & The Summer Dearth

  • The Shift: Our normal temperature range jumps to a high average of 89°F (with plenty of days pushing past 90°F). Days are at their longest, giving bees maximum flight hours, but the landscape is drying out fast.

  • Defining the Summer Dearth: We are rapidly entering what beekeepers call a dearth, a period where there is a severe shortage of nectar and pollen because our major spring flowering plants have finished blooming. In Middle Georgia, this is famously known as the "June Gap."

  • The Forage Outlook: The heavy spring flows that peaked in April and May (Tulip Poplar, Black Locust, and Privet) are completely wrapped up. Even though everything looks lush and green, the bees view it as a desert. Without careful management, they will quickly begin eating through their winter honey stores.

  • What Is Blooming? To help your bees pull through, look for or plant these key June and July survivors that provide vital life-support during the gap:

    • Summer Trees: Sourwood (the king of summer nectar, blooming mid-June through July in our acidic, well-drained soils) and Basswood / American Linden (early to mid-June).

    • Summer Shrubs: Vitex / Chaste Tree (an absolute powerhouse that pumps out purple nectar spires continuously into August), Smooth or Winged Sumac (excellent for nectar and high-lipid pollen), and moisture-loving Buttonbush along creek bottoms.

    • Wildflowers & Ground Cover: White Sweet Clover (deep roots keep it blooming through July), Partridge Pea (thrives in sandy soil with secret extrafloral nectar glands on its leaves), and hardy native Coneflowers.

​Recommendations for June

1. Honey Super Management & The Harvest

Whether you get to harvest this month depends entirely on your colony's strength and how quickly they processed the spring flow.

  • Check for Cappings: Regularly inspect your honey supers. Look for frames that are 80–90% fully capped with wax before removing them. If conditions were right, your main harvest happens now.

  • New Hive Exception: If you started a brand-new hive this spring, skip the harvest entirely. Let them keep 100% of their honey stores so they have the baseline resources to survive their first winter.

  • Small Hive Beetle (SHB) Warning: June humidity triggers an explosion of SHBs in our soils. Once you pull capped honey frames from a hive, extract them within 24 to 48 hours. Left sitting unmanaged, unhatched beetle eggs will hatch and ruin your honey crop.

2. Inspections & Hive Population Changes

As the swarming urge slows down, your inspection goals shift from swarm prevention to colony sustainability.

  • Frequency: Bi-weekly checks are plenty for established hives now. If you are a first- or second-year beekeeper, stick to weekly checks to keep learning how the colony reacts to summer heat.

  • The Brood Check: Look for a solid, compact brood pattern. You want to see mostly worker brood with just a few drones, and strictly one egg per cell. If the queen is playing hide-and-seek, finding fresh eggs proves she is on the job. If her performance is tanking, don't hesitate to pinch her and introduce a new, mated queen.

  • Compare Strength: Look at the population densities across your apiary. If a hive is lagging far behind the others, it may need intervention before the heat intensifies.

3. Hive Structure, Ventilation & Maintenance

Keeping bee homes steady and comfortable is critical as temperatures climb.

  • Level and Steady: Ensure every hive sits on a solid, level foundation so heavy honey supers don't lean.

  • Breathe Easy: Help your bees with evaporative cooling by adding ventilation (like using screened inner covers or propping the outer cover slightly with a popsicle stick).

  • Hydration: A strong colony can use up to a gallon of water daily to cool the brood nest. Ensure a reliable, permanent water source is nearby, adding floating corks or rocks so your foragers don't drown.

4. Integrated Pest & Disease Management (IPM)

We must keep pest levels well below damaging thresholds to protect our summer bees. June is often your best window to treat right after pulling your honey supers, or even right now using specific on-hand options before they expire.

  • Varroa Mites: Do not guess! Test! Use an alcohol wash or sugar roll to monitor mite loads. Treat immediately if your count exceeds the threshold of 1–3 mites per 100 bees.

  • Beetle Trapping: Use beetle blasters or oil trays under screened bottom boards to help bees manage SHB populations.

  • Health Patrol: Inspect brood combs for signs of Chalkbrood or Foulbrood (unusual dead, discolored, or twisted larvae, or abnormal/sunken cell cappings). Watch adult bees for deformed wings (viral loads) or dysentery staining on the hive face (indicative of Nosema).

​Summer Varroa Mite Treatment Options for June

If you have treatment supplies on hand that you want to use up before they expire, here is how to navigate your options during a Georgia June:

Option 1: HopGuard 3

If you still have honey supers on your hives or want a quick knockdown treatment that won't cook the bees in the summer heat, HopGuard is a great choice right now.

  • Honey Supers: Completely safe to use with supers on; it won't taint the honey.

  • Temperature Limits: Requires daytime temperatures to be above 50°F. Because it doesn't vaporize, it won't overwhelm or melt the brood when temperatures climb into the 80s and 90s.

  • Considerations: It primarily targets phoretic mites (on adult bees) rather than capped brood, making it a short-term knockdown. Open the hive entrances fully during application to help the colony manage moisture.

Option 2: Apiguard (Thymol)

Once you pull your honey supers for the year and the weather stays relatively mild, Apiguard is highly effective, but you must be extremely cautious with the heat.

  • Honey Supers: ABSOLUTELY NOT. It cannot be used while honey supers are on, as the strong thymol scent will completely ruin the flavor of the honey.

  • Temperature Limits: While the maximum safety ceiling is 100°F, its true safe zone is between 70°F and 85°F.

  • Risk Factors: If June daytime highs consistently soar past 90°F, the thymol gel vaporizes far too quickly. This can severely stress the colony, cause the queen to stop laying, or prompt the bees to abscond entirely.

Option 3: VarroxSan

These slow-release oxalic acid fiberboard strips are an excellent option for long-term, continuous control without the summer heat risks.

  • Honey Supers: Completely safe! It is USDA-approved for use during the honey flow and leaves no detectable residues in wax or honey.

  • Temperature Limits: None. It is not temperature-dependent, making it incredibly stable during our scorching 90°F+ June days.

  • Application Strategy: Fold the flexible strips and insert them directly into the brood cluster (typically 1 strip per 2.5 frames of bees). Because it is a slow-release mechanism, leave them in the hive for 42 to 56 days so it can catch multiple generations of mites as they emerge from capped brood.

Decision Matrix: If you are still chasing the summer honey flow, you can safely deploy either HopGuard 3 for a quick knockdown or VarroxSan for extended protection. Save the Apiguard for autumn (when the Goldenrod blooms). If your honey harvest is already complete, you can use Apiguard, but watch the forecast closely and hold off if a major heatwave hits.

For comprehensive treatment guidelines and thresholds, bookmark the tools at the Honey Bee Health Coalition.

​5. Feeding & Dearth Protection (GA Certified Standards)

As the summer dearth sets in, a colony can deplete its resources rapidly. To align with the Georgia Certified Beekeeper exam guidelines, a beekeeper must closely observe the physical resources inside the hive and recognize when a colony has hit an emergency threshold.

  • The Brood Nest Layout: During a standard inspection, check that the brood nest maintains its textbook structural layout: active brood frames centered in the lower chamber, flanked immediately by frames of pollen, and rimmed or capped with honey on the outermost edges and upper corners.

  • The Target Weight Threshold: For a standard 10-frame hive setup, a colony must maintain a safety buffer of at least 20 to 30 lbs of emergency honey stores within the brood boxes to prevent starvation during a summer dearth.

  • The Certified Frame Metric: According to First Lessons in Beekeeping, a standard deep frame packed completely with capped honey and honey reserves holds roughly 7 to 8 lbs of total weight. To maintain the mandatory 20-to-30-lb emergency buffer, your colony must have a minimum of 3 to 4 full deep frames of capped honey inside the brood nest at all times.

Evaluating Food Stores: The Manual Lift Method

To quickly gauge honey reserves without fully opening the hive and disrupting the bees' internal temperature regulation, apply the standardized manual heft check:

  1. The Position: Stand at the rear of the hive. Place your fingers firmly under the back cleat, handle, or rim of the bottom brood box.

  2. The Lift: Gently lift the rear of the hive just one inch off its stand, using the front entrance board as a stationary pivot point.

  3. The Diagnostic: Because this mechanical pivot point splits the mass, you are lifting roughly half of the hive's total weight. If the back lifts effortlessly with little resistance, the colony has dropped below its safe 20-to-30-lb baseline.

  • Action Steps: If reserves fail the lift check or frames show fewer than 3 to 4 full stores of honey, immediately provide supplemental feeding using a 1:1 sugar syrup inside an internal frame or top feeder.

Preventing and Managing Hive Robbing

​When nectar becomes scarce during a dearth, strong colonies look for easy targets. Weak hives, splits, or nucs are highly susceptible to being raided by robber bees or yellowjackets. If robbing starts, it can destroy a colony in hours.

How to Prevent Robbing (Before It Starts)

  • Never Open-Feed: Avoid putting sugar water or wet, extracted honey frames out in the open apiary. This triggers an uncontrollable feeding frenzy and trains bees to hunt for sugar around your yard.

  • Reduce the Perimeters: In early June, proactively install entrance reducers on all weak colonies, nucs, or newly made splits. Shrinking the entrance down to a 1-to-2-inch gap gives guard bees a narrow choke point they can easily defend.

  • Keep Feed Internal: Only feed using internal feeding systems—such as division board feeders, internal jar systems, or top hive feeders protected by a tight-fitting outer cover.

  • Clean Inspections: Work efficiently. Do not leave hives open longer than necessary during a dearth, and quickly clean up any honey or syrup drips on the outside of the hive bodies.

How to Identify a Robbing Incident

It is critical not to confuse a violent raiding party with normal foraging or a standard afternoon orientation flight. To accurately diagnose an active attack, check the front of the hive for these distinct behavioral signs:

  • Erratic Flight Profiles: Look closely at how the bees approach the box. Normal foragers fly straight to the landing board, while robber bees fly in a frantic, side-to-side "zipping" pattern. You will see lines of nervous bees actively scanning the seams between supers, looking for tiny cracks or holes to sneak into.

  • Combat on the Landing Board: Look for physical wrestling matches. Instead of a peaceful entrance, you will see guard bees actively clamping onto intruders, tumbling off the landing board, and fighting to the death. A heavily robbed hive will quickly have a pile of dead, hairless bees on the ground directly below the entrance.

  • Heavy, Engorged Departures: Watch the bees as they leave the hive. A normal foraging bee takes off quickly and cleanly. A successful robber bee leaves completely engorged with stolen honey, making her too heavy to fly easily. She will crawl clumsily up the front face of the hive box just to get high enough to catch the air and fly home.

Emergency Steps: What to Do if Robbing Occurs

If you walk into your yard and find an active robbing event underway, execute these containment steps immediately:

  1. Restrict the Choke Point: Immediately reduce the entrance of the victim hive down to a single-bee space. If you have a dedicated robbing screen, install it right away. Robbing screens allow resident bees to navigate out through a hidden top exit while redirecting confused attackers to a screened-off bottom entrance.

  2. Deploy the Bed Sheet Method: Soak a large cotton bed sheet or heavy beach towel in cold water and drape it completely over the entire attacked hive, covering all seams and the main entrance. The wet fabric cools and traps the hive scent inside so attackers lose the target trail. Resident bees can find their way out beneath the wet edge to defend the bottom board, while raiding bees eventually lose interest and fly home. Leave it in place for 24 to 48 hours until the apiary calms down.

  3. Seal the Cracks: Check the box joints. Tape or plug any rotting holes, wide cracks between supers, or gaps under the inner cover where robber bees might be bypassing the main guard line.

By: Candice Roebuck-Bailem, Georgia Certified Beekeeper

Updated: June 2, 2026

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